IIT-JEE multichoice questions only

MUMBAI: Putting to rest all confusion over admission to Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the joint admission board (JAB) of IITs clarified that the format of the joint entrance examination. JEE-Advanced paper will be the same as that of IIT-JEE in the last few years.

The ministry for human resource development (MHRD) issued its first ever notification on JEE-2013 for admissions to all centrally-funded technical institutes on August 14.

JEE-Advanced, which will determine admissions to IITs for 2013, will be held on June 2. The JEE-Advanced paper will only have multiple-choice questions which the students will attempt in two sessions, morning and afternoon.

This will come as a relief for aspirants who had been preparing in keeping with the old format which did not include subjective questions. Several IITs, including the one in Mumbai, were in favour of a subjective JEE.

The difficulty level of and the marks allotted to JEE-Advanced tests will be similar to that of previous JEEs.

"We have decided that the format of the test should remain the same as it is too late to introduce changes. However, the notification is just for 2013. The MHRD has also formed an apex board in order to have a smooth JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced this year and in future too," said a senior official from IIT-Bombay. Ashok Misra, the former director of the institute, is the honorary chairperson of the JAB.

The official, who attended the JAB meeting, added, "Machine-readable answersheets will also be retained. The rule allowing candidates to take home a copy of their answersheets will also be followed. While the format and everything else will remain the same in 2013, it can change in future."

According to the notification , top 1.5 lakh candidates, including all categories, from the JEE-Main exam will be eligible to appear for the JEE-Advanced . Students who qualify in the JEE-Advanced exam and fall in the top 20 percentile of the successful candidates in their respective board results will be eligible for admission to IITs.

If states want to admit any students on the basis of JEE scores, a separate state merit list will be given to them. Questions papers can be printed in regional language on demand.

Brilliant Tutorials Changes hands

CHENNAI/MUMBAI: The erstwhile leader of private tutored education in India--Brilliant Tutorials--is in the throes of a legal battle.

The Chennai-headquartered tutorial chain, one of the most reputed and among the oldest, has just seen a chartered accountant R Raghunandan staking claim to 99% shareholding after he converted loans extended to the troubled company into equity. Ten days ago, he issued a "public caution notice" about acquisition of the shares originally held by Vasanti Neelakantan (part of the original promoters of the company) in Brilliant Tutorials (P) Ltd.

"I now own slightly more than 99% in Brilliant which I tried to help over its financial crisis by way of loans. I have infused money for the stake. There is one other shareholder Shyam Nagarajan (who is a director of the company)," Raghunandan told TOI on Wednesday. Raghunandan hails from a business family in Chennai which owned large tracts of land in prime areas of the city.
Repeated attempts to reach Vasanti Neelakantan, who is listed as managing director on the company website, turned futile.

The day-to-day operations across the 32 centres of Brilliant have come to a complete halt, after the management started defaulting on loans late last year.

The 40-year-old Brilliant came into prominence with its unique models for classroom and distance education in coaching for competitive exams in the '80s. Brilliant had an unimpeachable track record on repayment of loans till two years ago. But trouble had already set in when the company diversified into software development more than five years ago. Firstware Software Solution was created to ride the IT wave, but it folded up in a few years, pulling Brilliant down in the process.

Brilliant, which tutored more than 30,000 students annually, had received investment proposals from investors like Sequoia Capital in the past.

More recently, TutorVista, a Pearson company, had approached with a buyout proposal but did not find favour with the founder family. Brilliant-founded by N Thanu and taken forward by his son T Neelakantan-began as coaching centre for IIT-JEE aspirants but expanded to offer correspondence and classroom courses for the whole range of competitive exams including Medical Entrance, AIEEE, GATE and, Civil Services.

"There is an impasse now. All centres have closed down. There are no staff at work. We hope to re-start operations with the help of the existing management," said a source involved with the latest development. Some centres were sold off to franchisee partners to tide over the crisis, but recovery was elusive. Several employees complained of non-payment of salaries and working capital constraints began to bite as revenue dropped. "We apprehend the sale of some of the assets by the erstwhile promoters which is why we cautioned the general public that there is a shareholding change at Brilliant," said one of the sources mentioned earlier.

JEE-2014 Combining with MAHARASHTRA JEE

PUNE: Minister for higher and technical education Rajesh Tope has said the government is strongly in favour of joining the national joint entrance exam (JEE) for engineering admissions from the academic year 2014-15, instead of 2013-14 as has been proposed by the HRD ministry. "We will convey our position to the HRD ministry soon," he told reporters here on Friday.

"We want to ensure that students from Maharashtra get adequate time to fully prepare for JEE," he said. "Joining the exam from 2013-14 will provide very little time for those students who are currently in Std XII, to prepare for the JEE, which will be based on the new curriculum for Stds XI and XII," he said. "What we have ensured, for now, is that the revised curriculum textbooks are available in the market for students to start their studies," he added.

Tope also said the government is proposing a 50:50 relative weightage to performance in the higher secondary certificate (HSC, Std XII) board exam and in the national JEE, for admissions to the larger section of unaided engineering colleges in the state, following the adoption of JEE by the state.

The state's final decision on when to join the national JEE and on the relative weightage issue will take some time to come through. The two issues will now be referred to the state cabinet for its approval, said Tope. On Thursday, the state government had approved the all-India single entrance exam scheme for medical courses called the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Text (NEET), which is now a certainty from 2013-14. This had generated more curiosity about the government's stance over the JEE for engineering.

The HRD ministry is introducing the national JEE from AY 2013-14 for centrally-funded technical institutions like the IITs, IIITs, NITs, among others, after the IIT council gave its final approval to a revised JEE scheme at its meeting held on June 27.

The scheme envisages a two-stage exam, i.e. JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced. The latter is to be conducted after JEE-Main with a suitable time gap. Only the top 1,50,000 candidates (including all categories) in JEE-Main will qualify to appear in the JEE Advanced examination. Admissions to IITs will be based only on category-wise all-India rank in JEE Advanced, subject to the condition that such candidates are in the top 20 percentile of successful candidates of their boards in applicable categories.

The ministry had left it to the state governments concerned to take a call on the relative weightage to performance in the HSC board exam and the national JEE for admissions to unaided engineering colleges and also to convey their position on joining the JEE scheme. The Maharashtra government had since appointed a committee under the principal secretary to the higher and technical education (H&TE) department, to collect feedback from students, parents, institutions and teachers and give its recommendations on the relative weightage and other connected issues.

"The committee has submitted its report, which is now being tabled before the state cabinet for its approval. The chief minister is also being apprised about the department's view on the issues linked to the national JEE," said Tope.

"We are proposing a 50:50 relative weightage with a view that the importance of attendance of Std XII classes at junior colleges cannot be overlooked. In the last few years, the attendance has fallen to an alarmingly low level due to increased focus on studies at private coaching and individual tuition classes. Students often miss out on the crucial exposure to application-based activities such as laboratory practicals at colleges," he said.

On the implementation of recommendations by the three committees appointed by the states for reforms in higher education, Tope said that the implementation process will begin in a week's time now that the government has received the Kumud Bansal panel report that has laid down a road map for the reforms.